Tuesday, April 2, 2019

Further Fallout from the Cambridge Divinity Faculty's Cowardice

For sure, lots of us are personally invested in our chosen identities, and deeply attached to the ideas they involve. As a self-consciously Anglo-Scottish Briton, l lost nights of sleep in 2014 worrying about the prospect of losing my identity to Scottish independence. And as a Christian, I find the lazy contempt of ignorant atheists very irritating. But that doesn’t mean that my identity as a Briton and a Christian should be beyond criticism, does it? So the fact that some students are upset by certain views, become indignant about them, or even feel existentially threatened by them, is not a reason to exclude those views. Rather, it’s a reason to teach the students the virtues of courage, self-restraint, patience, and critical openness necessary to cope with alien ideas liberally and responsibly—which is a university’s most important civic duty. No doubt some members of CUSU are really irked by what Jordan Peterson has to say, but that’s hardly a reason to exclude him. Besides, judging by his packed reception at the Cambridge Union in November of last year (as at the Oxford Union the previous May), thousands of students find his views interesting, convincing, and indeed exhilarating.
Personally, I'm fatigued with the puzzlewits who take to social media and lift up their historical and philosophical ignorance as a virtue and expect the rest of us to worship at that perverted altar.

Also, I enjoyed this bit of divinity faculty gibberish: “[Cambridge] is an inclusive environment and we expect all our staff and visitors to uphold our principles. There is no place here for anyone who cannot”.

If I may offer a translation: "We are so inclusive that we cannot include those who may disagree with our inclusivity."